SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety's Sake

'Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,' announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink's vice president of engineering:

'We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM. Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways... Starlink satellites have extremely high reliability, with only 2 dead satellites in its fleet of over 9000 operational satellites. Nevertheless, if a satellite does fail on orbit, we want it to deorbit as quickly as possible. These actions will further improve the safety of the constellation, particularly with difficult to control risks such as uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators.

But orbits are being lowered for another reason (besides quick de-orbiting), notes Space.com. Within the next four years the period of least solar activity is expected, a period which coincides with decreased atmospheric density, Nicolls added, 'which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases.'

[Bringing the satellites lower] will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months,' Nicolls wrote in his X post. 'Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision....' The downward migration in 2026 involves roughly half of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 9,400 operational spacecraft (though that number is always growing).

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